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Tuesday, 14 May 2013

Paleo Pulled Pork

My darling boyfriend has been the catalyst for my addiction with pulled pork. His obsession with Northern American food has been very influential on my cooking style over the past months and my pantry has been ever changing to provide room for ingredients he has purchased for me from the US. While I adore the Southern flavors, and Tex-mex spices, my concern is in regards to the less then healthy nutritional values that are constantly placed before me.

So instead of simply following traditional recipes, I took it as my duty to adapt my boyfriends beloved recipes, allowing him to enjoy the foods he desires but in a fashion that suits my dietary ethos.

Pulled Pork is often made with loads of BBQ sauce (a.k.a tangy sugar), tomato sauce (a.k.a tomato sugar) and brown sugar. Seriously the amount of sugar in this supposed 'savory meal' is often frightening! I don't need to add sugar loaded ingredients to my food for it to taste good. So after playing around with spices and flavors, I was able to create this scrumptious paleo pulled pork with so much tang and bite that you don't miss the sugar one little bit!

1. Trim excess fat off the pork shoulder or leg (I used leg) and place it in a slow cooker. Add the spices and apple cider vinegar, rubbing the mixture all over the pork until evenly covered. Cover the slow cooker and cook on high for 6 hours. After 6 hours, turn the setting down to low and cook for another 2-3 hours.

2. While the pork is cooking you can make the sauce. Combine all the ingredients for the sauce in a saucepan and stir over low heat for 10 minutes, or until thick and flavorful.

3. Once the pork has been cooking for approx 8-9 hours, remove the lid and shred the pork using two forks. It should be so tender that this is very easy to do. Add the sauce and stir to combine. Replace the lid and cook the pork with the sauce for another 30min-1 hour or until ready to eat. Serve with a simple side salad, with bread or place it into cute little jars for a perfect picnic treat!

Great recipe Brooke. The guys at work really liked it. I ended up with a 7 lb pork shoulder (smallest I could find), fed 5 hungry firefighters at work and my wife and I ate the leftovers for 4 days. It was great. Had quite a kick to it, too.

I really like this recipe! I made it a few times already and started fiddling with it. One of the things I found was that it always took a toll on my spice cabinet (really!), and the recipe packs quite a punch taste-wise, so I tried this with satisfaction: for the sauce, cut all spices, dijon mustard and garlic in half (only keep original quantities of vinegar, tomato paste, and water). The rub remains identical. It's still quite good at about half the cost.